History

Like its Mekong neighbours, excavations in central Myanmar have unearthed 10,000-year-old remnants of man. Further digging reveals ethnic pockets formed city-states some 3,000 years ago. These merged into separate kingdoms, which often simultaneously dominated the country.

Similar to a river’s tributaries, several ethnic groups led to today’s Myanmar. The Mon, Burman, Shan, Rakhine and others all played a role, but many academics point to the Pyu as the first. These Sino-Tibetan migrants settled in the north-central Ayeyarwady valley. Several Pyu city-states and the Tagaung Kingdom emerged by 1000 BC, with religious structures and advanced water systems. The Tagaung fell around 500 BC, with the Pyu’s western Wattharlee Kingdom taking the reins in 484 BC, to begin 600 years of rule with 27 kings.

Meanwhile, the Mon had moved down the Thanlwin River (Salween), and prospered around Thaton. Their language reflects an eastern Khmer influence, while seagoing Mon voyaged west to India by 600 BC. They brought back Buddhism and Indian culture, spreading both to the Pyu and as faraway as Laos. By the 3rd century, the Mon had built Yangon’s original Shwedagon Pagoda and founded the Suwarnabhumi Kingdom, known in Chinese and Indian literature as “The Land of Gold”, which stretched throughout Thailand.

The Burmans appeared from the northwest, forming city-states that gave rise to the Bagan Dynasty in 107 AD. By the 5th century, other civilisations were springing up around the delta valley including the Rakhine near Bangladesh. In 573, two Mon princes founded the Hongsavatoi Kingdom in Bago, which flourished in peace for over 200 years. In 849, the Burmans swooped in, and conquered the Mon and the weakening Pyu.

They set up their capital in Bagan, southwest of Mandalay, and slowly expanded, taking control of Mon-held Thaton in the 11th century, before moving on the Dvaravati Kingdom in Siam over the next 100 years. They then began to consolidate in time for the start of the Mongol’s Yunnan invasion in 1254. The Burmans moved northeast through the Shan State to attack in 1277, but were crushed, and Genghis Khan’s army advanced, marching into the capital in 1289. However, scrappy guerrillas near Mandalay drove out a fading Mongol Dynasty by 1300.

Bagan tried to push east for over 50 years before the Lanna-backed (northern Thailand) Shan drove them south of Mandalay to Ava in 1364. Here, the remaining Burmans revived Bagan culture and literature, but a weak defence left them open to attack, and the Shan toppled them in 1527. For their part, the Mon took advantage of the weakened Burmans to regain Bago, where the kingdom rose under King Dhammazedi in the late 15th century to a golden age of commerce, literature and Buddhism, and was the first to make contact with the west.

Meanwhile, surviving Burmans from Ava moved south to Tuangoo in 1531 under Tabinshwehti, who began to unify Myanmar. Sensing the coming of European trade, he set up the capital in Bago, where his brother-in-law, Bayinnaung, succeeded him to the throne in 1551. The chaotic political scene in Myanmar’s neighbours saw him invade Lanna in 1558, India’s Manipur in 1560 and Siam’s Ayutthaya in 1569.

These conquests took their toll, and the Tuangoo Burman’s pulled back, even withdrawing from the south after Portuguese incursions. Bayinnaung’s grandson, Anaukpetlun, reunited Myanmar in 1613 and pushed the Portuguese from the ports. Subsequent rules re-established Bagan culture in Ava and focussed on religion, while the French moved into Bago, urging the Mon to rebel, which they did in 1752, reaching Ava in the process.

The next year, Alaungpaya from north of Mandalay drove the Mon from Bago, and conquered the south by 1759. He established the Burman Konbaung Dynasty capital in Yangon in 1760 before marching on Ayutthaya, but was killed. His son, Hsinbyushin, stepped in and crushed the Siamese capital in 1767, while fending off China. A second son, Bodawpaya, lost Ayutthaya, but grabbed Rakhine (1784) from India on the Bay of Bengal, before his successor toppled Assam in 1819, leading to a direct clash with the British.

The British launched the first of three wars, which ended in colonising the entire country. After the 1824-1826 war, Myanmar lost its Indian holdings as well as Rakhine and Taninthayi. British expansion towards Singapore prompted a second war in 1852, in which they annexed Bago. King Mindon moved Myanmar’s capital to Mandalay, but the British declared war again in 1885, and conquered the north by 1890.

The 20th century welcomed a new, western educated class in Myanmar, which organised peaceful strikes leading to constitutional reform in 1923. However, the changes were not fast or far-reaching enough for some, and a two-year peasant rebellion broke out in 1930. Younger students replaced the old vanguard, and staged a strike in 1936, and the British separated Myanmar from India the following year, granting it a new constitution with Ba Maw as prime minister. He was ousted in 1939.

Myanmar was occupied by the Japanese during World War 2, and in the post-war period the liberation movement, which started earlier in the century, came to a climax, with Myanmar attaining independence on 4 January 1948.